Warke's long hunt brings home one for the list

OUTDOORS

Last-minute excursion lasted 22 days.

Jonathan Warke is pictured with a stone sheep that he harvested in British… (Contributed photo )

November 08, 2010|Gary Blockus

Jonathan Warke crawled out on an icy ledge on a piece of snowy shale along a bluff in British Columbia, Canada, with nothing below him but the air revealing a steep drop-off hundreds of feet to the bottom.

Below him and out a bit, just about 250 yards away, a stone sheep ram peered up, catching Warke's scent in a swirling wind.

As Warke measured his shot before the stone sheep got totally spooked, Shawn Raymond, his guide and outfitter for the trip, crawled on top of the 60-year-old Warke's back and whispered, "You've got to shoot."

"I'm trying to keep myself calm," Warke, a Kutztown resident who grew up in Orefield, recalled of what transpired during the hunt in late September. "He tells me it's 250 yards. I shoot my 7 mm Magnum … Woof, I whacked him. The sheep fell and dropped about 100 yards."

The ensuing 2-hour, 20-minute horseback ride to claim the stone sheep was followed by another harrowing three-hour trip back to camp after sunset, during which guide and hunter were forced to cross a beaver-dammed creek on the backs of their horses, who had to swim across the swollen waters.

"It was unbelievable, to tell you the truth," said Warke, a former schoolteacher who retired from Mack Trucks three years ago. Warke has been an avid hunter since he was a child growing up in Orefield, where he said local lands offered great hunting in the 1950s and 1960s.

Warke has been big-game hunting throughout North America the past 36 years. Thirty-five years ago, he began thinking about claiming the 29 animals that comprise the Super Slam. So far, he's bagged 19. He's harvested a Dall sheep in Alaska, a mountain goat in British Columbia and a musk ox in Sacks Harbor, just 140 miles from the North Pole ("Seriously cold, like minus-50 degrees," he said.).

On the stone sheep hunt, he also bagged a mountain caribou.

Pursuing big game is a costly affair. Warke is retired and has been able to cut expenses by being available at the last minute to take the place of hunters who cancel or cut trips short.

"Canadian hunts are so expensive for sheep because of supply and demand," he said. "The odds of getting drawn in the lottery for a tag are incredible. I know one guy out there, his dad started putting him in the lottery for a tag when he was nine. He's 52 and [has] never drawn a tag."

Warke never thought he'd draw a stone sheep tag.

"The trick is that when you're retired, you can stay in contact with these brokers and outfitters on hunts," Warke said. "I happened to talk to this one guide about mountain caribou, and he told me I could pick one up on a stone sheep hunt. The price for a sheep hunt is through the roof because of supply and demand. It's been going up $1,500 to $2,000 a year. I said I couldn't afford that."

This particular outfitter from Utah contacted Warke and said there was a tag available after another client abandoned a stone sheep hunt just three days into it. After weighing the pros and cons of the cost, Warke decided to go for the hunt, but was told he had to make it there in nine days for a 10-day hunt. That meant steeper airfare.

The base camp near Fort Nelson, B.C., set up at an altitude of 2,200 feet. The sheep were at 6,000 to 7,000 feet, and every day it was a four-hour ride on horseback to achieve that altitude. The first three days of hunting were washed out by rain. Heading toward the end of the 10 days, Warke sought permission to stay longer. Raymond then took over guiding Warke.

"He told me that I was the first person who ever wanted to stay past the end date of their hunt," Warke said. "He said one out of four sheep hunters don't stay the 10 days."

On the 17th day of the hunt, Warke and Raymond got on to a ram and a smaller sheep. Despite slippery, snow-covered rocks, the pair got within about 170 yards of the sheep before they disappeared along the drop-offs. That just fueled even more Warke's passion to bag a sheep.

The ram he ended up getting proved very special for Warke, who does most of his taxidermy work.

"It's certainly not the biggest sheep, but the coat and the color are great. The chest is like a royal gray. Very few people get to hunt stone sheep because it's so expensive."

It's also dangerous, and Warke keeps himself in tip-top shape.

"These are very physical hunts, but 70 percent of it is mental," he said.

The first animal on the Super Slam list that Warke harvested was something he shot before he even heard of the Super Slam — a Pennsylvania white-tailed deer as a boy. His list has been growing and growing since he started thinking about it in 1974 during a trip to Gillette, Wyo., from which he brought back an antelope and a mule deer. Now, he's got 10 animals left on his list.